Ten Links I've Emailed

As an exercise, I went through my email outbox, and found the last ten emails where I've sent people links. I decided to post them here so readers can decide what kind of person is described by these ten links.

A comedy philosophy piece.

The website of a windmill company.

An article about "Steal Something Day." (An extension of "Buy Nothing Day".)

An article from GQ about Donald Rumsfeld.

"Wind farm kills Taiwanese goats."

Stephen Fry explains free software.

Richard Stallman sings the Free Software Song.

The Bulgarian folksong that inspired the Free Software Song.

A documentary about making cane fifes in Mississippi.

Jon Stewart mentions the Labadie Collection on The Daily Show.

While it would be perhaps amusing to present this without commentary, here are a few points that, I think, enhance understanding.

About the Free Software Song: I'm told it is in 7/8 time, but I can't count it for the life of me. However, the Wikipedia article on Bulgarian folk music says:

"One of the most distinctive features of Balkan folk dance music is the complexity of its rhythms in comparison to Western music...For example, the dance lesnoto ("the light/easy one") has a meter of 7 beats with emphasis on the first, fourth, and sixth beats. This can be divided into three groups, a "slow" unit of 3 beats and two "quick" units of 2 beats, often written 3-2-2...It should be emphasized that this terminology is a crude simplification and is not used by Balkan musicians; it does not capture the full subtlety of Balkan rhythms."

The Labadie Collection is, as Jon Stewart explains, a library collection at the University of Michigan that has documents from the history of anarchist and radical thought. I was there recently researching the history of the IWW in Ann Arbor, and I sent the Jon Stewart link to a friend of mine that works there.

This exercise was rather amusing, so I'll probably do it periodically.